IBEW
LU 136 Birmingham, Al.
205-833-0909
Business Manager's Report Sorry that I have not updated this page in a while, but things have been busy around the hall. I thought about what to put on this page, and want to give you a brief of the last two and one half years. Shortly after 2008, we started staying open till 4:30 on Fridays. This is for your convenience so if you get laid off on Friday afternoon, we will be here to allow you to sign the book. We stagger our lunches if we take one at all, so you can call the hall during your lunch. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving we did all go have lunch together for our Thanksgiving, We have designed this website to keep you informed as much as possible and try to keep you updated. We also are on facebook. The other day someone tagged the facebook account and asked about up coming work. Within an hour we had the work outlook on facebook. There will be times that we will not be able to be as prompt, but we will be in touch as much as possible. In the past we have had situations that we could not man our work as we should, because we did not have an emergency referral system in place. We have one in place now. We will use it in emergency situations only. We are working our way toward commercial work as much as possible. We have shown that we can do commercial work through our salting campaigns. The General Contractor was very pleased with the work we did on a large project in Leeds, and the project came in on time. Good job guys! We are trying different approaches to gain more market share. We will try everything possible to create more work opportunities for our members. We have started the Jobs-4-Alabama program. This program is designed to make sure that if a job is let in our area that we will do everything possible to insure that the electrical workers are legally in this country. This will help our contractors be more competitive. We are working on our Davis-Bacon surveys. These surveys are to get the prevailing wage up in each county. A few counties prevailing rate is our scale, but many counties in our jurisdiction is far below our scale. If we can get the scale up in these counties, we will have a better chance of getting some of the projects in these areas. We have launched a campaign to try to get our work back in Tuscaloosa. This is one of the most suppressed areas in our local’s jurisdiction. Anniston is an area that we will be working on also. The Executive Board has taken a diversified approach on advertising the local. We have commercials on the radio, a sign at the Barron’s game, and a sign at Legion Field for UAB. We also sponsor Heath Smith in the Bass Pro Southern Trail circuit. If you haven’t seen the boat, it is sharp. He is also having his truck wrapped with the IBEW theme. Heath does a great job representing the local. We are staying on top of work that is coming up in the city of Birmingham. This is something that has been asked of this local for a long time. If there is a project for the city we will be tracking it. We reported in the newsletter that we have a new minority contractor. We are proud to have McWilliams Electric as a union contractor. We are committed to help all of our contractors, and we will work with McWilliams every way possible to help them get started. We are constantly trying to organize new contractors. This should always be the number one priority of anyone that works at this hall. I have to commend all that has taken the initiative to try to help in this transaction from mostly industrial work to include more commercial work. The General Meeting is still on the third Thursday. We cook hotdogs for the members that attend the meetings just in case they did not get to go home before the meeting. I have noticed that the number of apprentices that attend the meeting could start out numbering the J.W’s. At the November meeting there was a large number of apprentices that attended. Lets keep working together to improve our local and restore the pride that we once had. We can do this by being proud of who you are and proud to be a union electrician. If you need us here at the hall, give us a call. I hope everyone and their families have a great holidays. 2009
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Last year we had high hopes that the economy would have taken a turn for the better by now. Although we do not have full employment, we are still doing better than many locals that I speak with. As we mentioned in the June General meeting St. Louis Local 1, has just taken an 8.77% cut in their total package, which includes a $3.30 loss of wages on the check. Chattanooga Local 175 got $.25 over three years more than we did. Local 8 in Toledo had to give some concessions to settle their contract. If we think we have had it hard in this recession, look around at the other locals.
Even though the council’s decision did not require us to take any concessions, we are certainly supporting our loyal contractors that have been with us for years. We are meeting with them to see if we can be of assistance to them in winning more work, which of course would be beneficial to us in many ways.
To simply say there is nothing we can do about this market is not acceptable. We are most definitely going to keep meeting with new contractors. We have been surprised to find in many cases that they like what we have to offer. When we assure them that the IBEW can supply them with qualified electricians, that the contractor has the right to manage their workforce as they see fit, and we will man their work as they have a demand, they seem to like the idea. You can get an update on our everyday organizing under the HOME PAGE drop down listed as ORGANIZING NEWS.
This is not to say that getting new contractors is something that will come overnight. We have been, and will continue to work as hard as possible to have work for our members even when times are difficult.
It is times like these that strain the Brotherhood. We must hold our heads up high and keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances. We have to take a hard look at the state of our local, and what will be the best for us as a whole.
We have members that will tell you that what we are doing is not what we should be doing, but when you ask them what direction we should be going, they do not have the answer.
The direction that we have chosen is to go in the path of growth. We want to come out of this recession stronger than when we went into it. We cannot wait till the powerhouses and the industrial work has dissipated before we try to change gears. When unemployment in our local is higher than usual, taking a chance on changing our way of doing business cannot be wrong. Sitting on our hands and doing nothing is definitely wrong although it certainly would be the easy thing to do.
Never should we stop looking to the future. We have to stay creative in the way we think and the way we do business. If we stay ahead of the curve and act instead of react our local will be prosperous. If we spend more time thinking about how to solve problems rather than creating them, think positive, and leave all other feelings aside we have a long and bright future ahead.
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The Local 136 Retired Members meet the first Wednesday of every month for coffee and donuts and to rebuild old powerhouses. They then go out for lunch and harass the girls down at the restaurant. Come join these Brothers in some fellowship next month.
Below are the Brothers @ the March 2010 get-together.
We have been very fortunate throughout the year of 2009. In many months of 2009, we had close to record-breaking amounts of work. Most of this was due to work at Goodyear in Gadsden and the ongoing environmental projects for Alabama Power. Some of these projects are winding down and cutting back on manpower.
We have been very fortunate to have had this amount of work in this economic turndown the past two years. Other Locals and IBEW Brothers & Sisters all across the Country have not been as fortunate. The good news is that the economy is showing signs of returning, and we see more projects in the planning stages.
Because of this, the staff has been working hard in the past year trying to diversify ourselves, so that we can get back in the commercial market. I have been meeting with as many contractors as possible to look at what can be done for them to be more competitive when they submit their bids.
We are proud to announce that Miller Electric is going after hospital and health care work. We met with them to make sure they know we are going to stand behind them as they try to break into this highly saturated market. They have managed to take the maintenance from one open shop on a hospital already, so we will be looking to help them move forward in their endeavors.
We are having Organizing classes at the hall to educate our members to become very knowledgeable in this area. These classes are to educate members on how we go about organizing, and how we can target certain projects as opportunities for employment. All these projects are under the direction of the Organizing office. Any help and information on these projects and others will be greatly appreciated.
As many of you have already found, we have a new Website that is replacing the old one. This site can be reached at www.ibewlocal136.org. The site has been completely rebuilt and is hopefully more informative that the old one. It was built in house so it can be changed and updated daily. I think you will also find the site entertaining as well as current. The site is for our current and retired members to check information such as Death Benefits, upcoming events, history of the IBEW and our local, and many other features. We would also ask for input from you as to what you might want to see included on our website.
We are also working on combining referral procedure records and membership records to have complete local work histories. That way, if a member needed a work history printout for background checks or Nuclear Power clearances, you would be able to obtain that at the click of a button.
Please bear with us as we make progressive changes, moving forward to keep up with the ever changing times that we live in today.